NFFE Local 1705 and General Services Administration (Authority decision, July 24, 1986)

Final FLRA decision. The Authority resolves the court remand and again finds the proposal outside the duty to bargain. An aggrieved person may petition an appropriate United States court of appeals for review within 60 days after issuance under 5 U.S.C. § 7123(a).

Plain-English summary

After a court remand, the Authority reconsidered a GSA union's proposal to define a reduction in force competitive area in the agency's central office. The Authority found that applicable personnel regulations would include nonunit employees inside the proposed geographic and organizational boundaries. Because bargaining over the proposal would directly set conditions for those employees, the Authority again found it outside the mandatory duty to bargain.

Decision snapshot

• Authority: 5 U.S.C. § 7105(a)(2)(E), 5 U.S.C. § 7117.
• Outcome: Competitive area proposal again found nonnegotiable on remand.
• Key point: The proposed RIF area necessarily covered employees outside the union’s bargaining unit.

Full text (FLRA public release)

[ v22 p695 ]

22:0695(76)NG

The decision of the Authority follows:

22 FLRA No. 76

NATIONAL FEDERATION OF FEDERAL
EMPLOYEES, LOCAL 1705
Union

and

GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
Agency

Case No. 0-NG-945
17 FLRA 945

DECISION AND ORDER ON REMAND

I. Statement of the Case

This case is before the Authority pursuant to a remand from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The question involved is whether "competitive areas" within an agency for reduction-in-force (RIF) purposes are within the duty to bargain under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (the Statute).

II. Background

In a previous decision in this case, National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 1705 and General Services Administration, 17 FLRA 945 (1985), the Authority held that the following Union proposal defining a competitive area within the Agency for purposes of a RIF was outside the duty to bargain:

The competitive area for bargaining unit employees shall consist of employees of FPRS, OIRM, GMA, and PBS located within the GSA Central Office organization, Metropolitan Washington, D.C. area.

The Union's petition for review of that decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was pending when the D.C. Circuit issued its decision in Local 32, American Federation of Government Employees v. FLRA, 774 F.2d 498 (D.C. Cir. 1985), remanding two related cases involving the same issue /*/ and directing the Authority to address and resolve what the court described as an apparent conflict between the Authority's finding in those cases and the Authority's findings in Association of Civilian Technicians, Pennsylvania State Council and Pennsylvania Army and Air National Guard, 14 FLRA 38 (1984) (ACT) that a proposed competitive area was within the duty to bargain. On December 3, 1985, pursuant to the Authority's unopposed request, the D.C. Circuit remanded the instant case for further consideration in light of the court's decision and the Authority's consideration of those cases on remand. National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 1705 v. FLRA, No. 85-1399 (D.C. Cir. Dec. 3, 1985).

III. Analysis

The proposal at issue here would establish a competitive area consisting of portions of four subordinate organizational elements within the Agency's Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Central Office, and would include both bargaining unit and nonbargaining unit employees within that proposed competitive area.

In its Decision and Order on Remand in the Local 32 case referred to above, the Authority addressed the apparent conflict between the Local 32 and ACT decisions, reconciling and distinguishing the two cases as follows:

In summary, the proposals in both the ACT and Local 32 cases would have directly determined the conditions of employment of bargaining unit employees. The critical difference between the proposals lies in the nature and degree of the impact they would have on nonunit employees. The competitive area proposed in ACT only affected conditions of employment of nonunit employees indirectly: it excluded them from the negotiated competitive area. The proposed competitive area in Local 32, in contrast, consistent with the requirements of applicable OPM regulations, encompassed nonbargaining unit employees in the negotiated competitive area. It directly determined, that is, prescribed, their competitive area.

Consistent with this analysis, in all cases since Local 32 dealing with competitive areas where an agency has objected to bargaining based upon the fact that a proposed competitive area would directly determine nonunit employees' conditions of employment, the Authority has held the proposals to be outside the mandatory obligation to bargain.

American Federation of Government Employees, Local 32, AFL-CIO and Office of Personnel Management, 22 FLRA No. 49, slip op. at 8 (1986). Accordingly, the Authority concluded that the proposal in Local 32 was nonnegotiable because it would directly determine conditions of employment for employees outside the bargaining unit. As the proposal at issue in this case, similar to the one in Local 32, would establish a competitive area which necessarily includes nonunit employees within its boundaries, consistent with the requirements of applicable OPM regulations, it also is outside the mandatory obligation to bargain.

IV. Conclusion

Accordingly, for the reasons stated by the Authority in its Decision and Order on Remand concerning the proposal in the Local 32 case, the proposal at issue here also is nonnegotiable.

Issued, Washington, D.C., July 24, 1986.
/s/ Jerry L. Calhoun, Chairman
/s/ Henry B. Frazier III, Member
FEDERAL LABOR RELATIONS AUTHORITY

--------------- FOOTNOTES$ ---------------

(*) The two cases remanded by the court were American Federation of Government Employees, Local 32, AFL-CIO and Office of Personnel Management, 14 FLRA 754 (1984) (Local 32) and National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 29 and Department of the Army, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kansas City District, Kansas City, Missouri, 16 FLRA 75 (1984).